Post navigation

MD 022: AIDAN BAKER – DUALISM

After different collaborations between Aidan Baker and other musicians, we are finally presenting you the first solo release by Aidan Baker on Midira Records. We are very proud to bring you this little piece of art called “Dualism”.

The album starts like an untamed beast with dark drone and doom sounds and it morphs into a very gentle floating ambient body. Aidan plays guitar, bass and drums, what makes the tracks sound structured but also disengaged at the same time. The all-instrumental tracks have Nadja-like moments when the sound is darker and doomy and then they transform to beautiful melodies and rhythms. So you can hear the album moving from darkness to light, from heaviness to easiness and from interlaced to clear textured. Sometimes you feel like dancing, sometimes you feel like head-banging, sometimes you feel just relaxed and all sounds and moods fit perfectly together.

Listen to two tracks from “Dualism”:

The album is based on the theory of dualism. A theory enfolding several books and explanation, including different meanings. That´s what Aidan Baker thought about the Dualism theory referring to this recording:

“Dualism in philosophy refers to the theory that the mind and body are different things and while the body is necessarily part of the physical world, the mind (and thoughts) may or may not be associated with a physical, concrete reality… and the notion of a ‘consciousness bridge’ is the way one might attempt to bridge the gap, so to speak, between body and mind.”

We thought that is a nice concept, but then something unforeseeable happened. The Dualism theory overgrew the whole release project. After we decided to press the music on CD, the master tapes got lost. We were talking about what we can do, because everything was set up to be released. So Aidan Baker decided to re-record the album. After he recorded the album, the original recordings showed up again by coincidence. So we had two Dualism albums sounding completely different, both worth to be released. We decided to release both sessions as Session A and B. A circumstance fitting perfectly into the dualism theory. Then we were waiting for the CD to be finalized with a matt finished artwork. The parcel arrived from the plant, but accidentally with glossy artwork. We started to believe that there is a hex of dualism covering this project. But finally, we finished the album with 2 CDs and a handsome matt lamination.

To perfect the album package, we added a letterpress inlay including a poem by Aidan Baker (from Passing Through) and an antithetic version of the cover artwork. Manufactured by Letterjazz with some very old letterpress machines.
Some more dualism trivia in this context: The alphabetic characters A and B of both sessions does not only fit to the artist name but also to the name of our contact person at the letter press studio. Dualism fortuity.

Dualism comes as a double CD album in an edition of 200 copies housed in a 6 panel digipack, including a letterpress inlay on 650 gram LeNaBoard (grey cardboard).

And if that is not special enough for you, we have 50 deluxe editions housed in a grey handmade canvas pouch including a third CD featuring “Consciousness Bridge (Dual Version)”. A 21 minutes mixed version of the first track combining the guitar tracks of both sessions, bringing another dualism aspect to the whole package.

Talking about the package. The beast artwork is made by Phillipp Kunze, who also did the artwork for Aidan Bakers “Cameo” album. Our graphic designer Katharina Woltering finally made the whole arrangement, that combines different graphical dualism elements.